You just can't teach an old warmonger new tricks. The terror bombings in London brought forth the same responses from President Bush and his media lackeys we know so well - "this is why we're in Iraq, the terrorists hate us because of who we are (and of course not for what we've done)," etc. The lies and deaths of the last several years have taught them nothing.

Everything is wrong with our imperial culture and what we've done in the Middle East. Bush said we had to overthrow Saddam Hussein to gain security, but the CIA has just released a report saying that win, lose or draw, the insurgents will leave Iraq highly trained in all the arts of terrorism. Our illegal, unconstitutional and optional war in Iraq will leave a hardened cadre of fighters skilled in assassination, car bombings and similar tactics to spread across the earth beyond anything the Soviet/Afghan war spawned.

Bush assured us that Saddam's downfall would make the world safer. But the number of terrorism-related deaths worldwide between March 2004 and March 2005 were nearly twice the year's total before the Iraq war.

Bush said, without proof, that Saddam not only had weapons of mass destruction but also intended to use them on us. Saddam's demise was to give us pause for relief. But Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., surveyed various officials and experts and found a consensus that there's a 70 percent chance of a WMD attack somewhere in the world within the next decade. The odds are nearly one in three that the attack will be nuclear such as a dirty bomb, according to these experts. We may assume such an attack won't be in, say, Albania or Togo.

It appears our war with Iraq has at best no effect on our security, at worst put us at far greater risk. Our grandchildren will likely still be paying for lunatic choices Bush has made.

The warmongers claim the terrorists attack us because we are free, live in big houses and have women drivers. Yet the terrorists say the same thing again and again, as they did after the London massacres: this is retaliation for your wars and sanctions in the Mideast. We westerners rightly reject mass murder as a justifiable response. But we play the fool to think al-Qaida's terrorism takes place in a vacuum.

We shouldn't be shocked that there are those who objected mightily to seeing anywhere from 350,000 to 800,000 Iraqis die from our sanctions and war. Raise your hand if you have felt even the slightest twinge of guilt over the deaths of these men, women and children, these unnecessary deaths based on lies that have not purchased us peace or security. Anyone?

Some say Saddam was solely responsible for the sanctions on Iraq. Hmm. Suppose interrogators round up a man they think has a harmful secret, and his family. He won't crack, so they proceed to smash his wife's nose and break her kneecaps. He seems not to care, so they continue beating her senseless and cut off supplies to his kids, several of whom consequently die. It turns out the man had nothing to hide anyway. Would anyone seriously believe that the interrogators are blameless in their actions?

No matter. I listened to Hillary Clinton's "Alfred E. Neuman" speech the other day. She wants a bigger military, more troops, more weapons, as do most of the leading Democrats. Warmongers, fear not; the next president from either party is bound to keep the blood flowing.

Nelson is a Fargo postal worker and regular contributor to The Forum's commentary pages. He can be reached at r.cnelson@702com.net

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